Embodiment Matters Podcast

In this conversation, we speak with our friend and teacher, Cynthia Jurs, along with our dear friend and cohost, Leilani Navar, of The Turning Season Podcast. Cynthia recently published Summoned by the Earth: Becoming a Holy Vessel for Healing our World, which is a wisdom book for our times. As both of us have shared, this book is an extraordinary weaving of spiritual biography, riveting travel adventures, essential Dharma instructions, sacred activism, deep ecology, indigenous wisdom, and an overall beautiful story of a human being dedicating her life to liberation, and caring for this living Earth in these mythic times in which we live. Our conversation moves through many terrains including working with difficult times, the balance of prayer and activism, dismantling systems of domination, keeping our fingernails dirty with the work and practices of liberation, and so much more. In the beginning of the conversaiton, Erin mentions the gathering of the International Council of 13 Indigenous Grandmothers, and you can find information on that here. We hope you enjoy, and we highly recommend reading Cynthia's book (or listening, as she reads it in her own voice.) To find our more about the class, Take Heart: Embodying the Great Turning, that Erin and Leilani are teaching in January, 2025 with guest teachers, Cynthia Jurs, Francis Weller, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer and Lydia Violet Harutoonian you can click here. You can find out more about Cynthia's Gaia Mandala practice here and her Earth Treasure Vase project here. And you can find out more about Leilani Navar and the Turning Season Podcast here

Beauty as Ballast, Grief as Guide, Body as Sacred Land In this conversation between dear friends Erin of Embodiment Matters & Leilani Navar of Turning Season https://turningseason.com/ we dive into rich topics which we'll be exploring in some upcoming online offerings. Beauty as Ballast, Grief as Guide, and Body as Sacred Land. We also delve into the 5 Vows of the Great turning as articulated by Joanna Macy (see below.) To find out more about our 3-Sunday series, click here. https://embodimentmatters.com/take-heart-3-sundays-of-encouragement-for-weary-earth-lovers/ Soon the January course Take Heart: Embodying the Great Turning, with special guest teachers Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer https://ahundredfallingveils.com/, Cynthia Jurs, https://earthtreasurevase.org/about-us/founder/ Francis Weller https://www.francisweller.net/, and Lydia Violet Hartoonian https://schoolforthegreatturning.com/, will be listed on our events page. Be sure to sign up for our newsletter to stay tuned to this and future offerings. https://embodimentmatters.com/live-with-erin-and-carl/ Five Vows of the Great Turning I vow to myself and to each of you to commit myself daily to the healing of our world and the welfare of all beings. I vow to myself and to each of you to live on Earth more lightly and less violently in the food, products, and energy I consume. I vow to myself and to each of you to draw strength and guidance from the living Earth, the ancestors, the future beings, and our siblings of all species. I vow to myself and to each of you to support you in your work for the world, and to ask for help when I need it. I vow to myself and to each of you to pursue a daily practice that clarifies my mind, strengthens my heart, and supports me in observing these vows.

In this conversation/ transmission we were so honored to hear Dr. Jaiya John pour forth from the depths of his heart and soul in a way that can't help but touch your own. We were blessed to hear from Jaiya about his background and how he went from being shy and voiceless to a fully-dilated voice for Love. We were blessed to hear him read passages from several of his extraordinary books including Freedom: Medicine Words for your Brave Revolution; All These Rivers and You Chose Love; and Dear Artist: A Love Letter. Carl and I also each read a short excerpt from his forthcoming book(s) We Birth Freedom at Dawn. We are so grateful for his generosity of spirit, his gorgeous writings, and his presence in our lives. His love and courage are contagious. Our wish is that all who listen become infected and go on to spread this love and courage in your own communities. What an honor to share a conversation with the extraordinary soul, poet, teacher, writer, Dr. Jaiya John. Please find more about him, his books, his poetry gatherings, his newsletter, his Instagram and more at www.jaiyajohn.com Toward the end of our conversation, Jaiya mentions our dear heart-friend Alexandre Jodun of ahealingbridge.com If you loved this podcast, please share it far and wide!

Dear friends, It is such a pleasure to share this conversation with Zuza Gonçalves. I met Zuza at the Bobby McFerrin Circlesongs School, and was so moved by his presence, his kindness, the way he moved around the room, and how he led us in movement, song and body-percussion. It felt to me like original human music. Zuza has been exploring alternative ways to collective music making for more than 20 years, integrating vocal improvisation, body percussion, movement, dialogue, cooperative practices and collaborative methodologies to promote experiences where music and human connection are interconnected and feed off each other. Born and raised in São Paulo, Brazil, Zuza has a bachelor's degree in Music (composing and conducting) and a graduate degree in the Pedagogy of Cooperation. He is the co-creator of Música do Círculo, part of the faculty at Bobby McFerrin's Circlesongs School, at IBMF (Ghana edition) and travels internationally for festivals and workshops on Música do Circulo. In our conversation, we speak about vocal improvisation as ancestral practice, and how we are all musical by nature. We speak about the challenges that arise when we outsource our musicality to a small number of perfomers, and don't experience ourselves as being a part of music being made in daily life. We also explore the value of play and improvisation, an how essential these qualities are for learning, and meeting challenging times, and how rarely modern adults get to experience play and improvisation. Zuza also guides us all in a wonderful improv practice to sing and play along with. To find our more about Música do Círculo and the upcoming retreats and trainings you can visit https://www.musicadocirculo.com To find out more about the Circlesongs School you can visit https://circlesongs.com Also Zuza mentions The Well, a global vocal improvisation network https://thewellvocal.com And here are links to other circlesongs/ vocal improv resources: http://www.judivinar.com https://www.rhiannonmusic.com https://gaelaubrit.com http://www.joeyblake.com https://www.destaniwolf.com https://www.christianekaram.com http://www.rizumik.com/ https://www.jaospina.com https://www.varijashree.com https://www.goussycelestin.com/works https://vocaltoning.net

Embodying Maitri: The Essential Ingredient with Erin Geesaman Rabke We're delighted to share with you this podcast where Erin speaks about the practice of Maitri. Maitri is a Sanskrit word often translated as "lovingkindness" but several teachers in our lineage have gone further, naming it "courageous unconditional friendliness," or "brave warmheartedness." In this episode, Erin speaks about the importance of this practice in living a healing life. Traditional Buddhist teachings suggest beginning the practice with oneself, then extending our circles of care ever outward. Erin shares personal stories of working with this practice, and invites you in. She also shares about her upcoming online class Maitri: A Courtship with the Essential Ingredient. You can learn more about that offering here. https://embodimentmatters.com/maitri-courting-the-essential-ingredient/ Erin refers to a few sources of inspiration in this episode including: To Love and Be Loved: The Difficult Yoga of Relationship with Stephen and Ondrea Levine https://www.soundstrue.com/products/to-love-and-be-loved bell hooks All About Love https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17607.All_About_Love Her Interview with Thich Nhat Hanh https://plumvillage.org/about/thich-nhat-hanh/interviews-with-thich-nhat-hanh/interview-with-bell-hooks-january-1-2000/ Open and Innocent by Scott Morrison https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3397459-open-and-innocent There is Nothing Wrong with You by Cheri Huber https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27580.There_Is_Nothing_Wrong_with_You And Mary Oliver's poem, To Begin with the Sweet Grass https://embodimentmatters.com/love-yourself/

John Wolfstone, a wilderness rites-of-passage guide and ritualist with Hebraic, Norse, and Celtic roots, delves into the significance of initiation in adulthood. He discusses the loss felt in modern cultures without traditional rites of passage and emphasizes the power of community support during this transition. The conversation explores how mentorship and ritual can foster personal growth and reconnect individuals with their inner selves. Additionally, John highlights the role of elders in nurturing generative service and collective well-being.

Embodying Reverent Relationship with Marika Heinrichs What a pleasure to speak with Marika Heinrichs of Wildbody.ca about somatics, lineages, respect and repair - and what a delight to have such a rich and tender conversation in Rumi's field that sits outside of any rigid and fixed ideas of rightdoing and wrongdoing. I hope you enjoy this important conversation. Marika Heinrichs is the granddaughter of German Mennonite, British, and Irish settlers to the part of Turtle Island colonially know as Canada. She is a queer, femme, somatics practitioner and facilitator whose work focuses on the recovery of ancestral wisdom through body-based ways of knowing, and challenging the appropriation and erasure of Indigenous knowledge in the field of somatics. Marika resides on Attawandaron, Haudenosaunee and Anishinabe territory (a.k.a. Guelph, Ontario). She is grateful for the nourishment and support of her peers, mentors, and more-than-human kin. Links: website: wildbdoy.ca IG: @wildbodysomatics Courses: wildbody.ca/embodied-ethics Here is a link to a beautiful and important piece written by Marika which I referred to in our conversation - On White People Building Belonging Together in our Movements for Liberation. https://wildbody.ca/blog/on-building-belonging-as-white-people-within-our-movements Some powerful quotes from Marika's writings and teachings: "I believe that building healing communities is just as important as having access to individualized healing supports such as therapy. Divesting from appropriation is about both surrendering entitlement and feeling into the truth of our own peoples. I believe we are all capable of appropriation, and as a white bodied person I don't feel it's my work to tell Black, Indigenous, and other people of colour how to engage with their practices. I can share from what I know through my own journey into these questions, which includes feeling how intimately connected extraction, violence, and severance from the natural world are to the projects of white supremacy and Christian hegemony. Lack of acknowledgment and consent, spiritual bypassing, claiming ownership and superiority, prohibitive costs, lack of access for the descendants of the very peoples from whom practices emerged, no sense of connection or accountability to our own peoples, normalizing cis, straight, thin, white, able bodies… the list goes on. I want to envision a methodology of somatics that is invested in liberation right down to the roots of the lineages and histories of our practices. If we are not tending to the ways that this field has been shaped by supremacy, we are missing a core component of embodied liberation. Practices emerge from culture, they are shaped by time, place, and cosmology. All of our peoples had practices and ways of working with the body towards healing. Even if we engage in the most consent-based, ethical, values-driven protocols with practices from outside our own cultures, we miss the crucial work of facing into the grief and joy of our own lineages and peoples. I believe that the unwillingness to do this is one way that the field of somatics can perpetuate white supremacy, and I envision new/old practices that reconnect us with our ancestors and carry us through mourning, accountability, and repair as white people. As practitioners, we hold power around shaping these conversations in our field, and in supporting these conditions with these we serve. All those years practicing yoga are part of what shaped me and helped me to grow the capacity to release it for a practice that feels more aligned, more liberatory. It's not for me to decide who should or shouldn't practice yoga, or whether or not something is appropriation. Those questions can serve as distractions, virtue signalling that keeps us from the work of divesting from the roots of whiteness that lead to appropriation in the first place. I do know that the space that was left when I quit yoga made room for a new kind of connection to emerge that feels much more rooted in my values, and my lineage. I am not sure how we can approach practices such as yoga as white people without having something to share in return. A practice entails a relationship, if we don't know who we are or where we come from, how can we really engage in mutual connection?"

Sophie Strand is a writer from the Hudson Valley, blending spirituality, storytelling, and ecology. In this engaging discussion, she explores how trauma and identity shape our connection to the world. She redefines gender through ecological perspectives and challenges traditional roles, offering insights into sacred masculinity and the divine feminine. Sophie highlights the power of storytelling rooted in the land and emphasizes the importance of communal narratives and interconnected healing, urging a collective responsibility for environmental sustainability.

Animal Body, Deep Time and The Thing We All Long For: A Conversation with Josh Schrei Friends, we are delighted to share this recent conversation with Josh Schrei. Joshua Michael Schrei is the founder and host of The Emerald podcast. The Emerald combines evocative narrative, soul-stirring music, and interviews with award-winning authors and luminaries to explore the human experience through a vibrant lens of myth, story, and imagination. The Emerald draws from a deep well of poetry, lore, and mythos to challenge conventional narratives on politics and public discourse, meditation and mindfulness, art, science, literature, and more. A writer, teacher, and a lifelong student of the cosmologies and mythologies of the world — in particular the Indian subcontinent — Josh has sought to navigate the living, animate space of the imagination and advocate for a world that prioritizes imaginative vision. Josh has taught intensive courses in mythology and somatic disciplines for nearly 20 years. In our conversation, we cover some good terrain. We explore some pithy some essential Zen teachings, we look into what is the experience of our animal body, what does it mean to living an animate universe? Throughout the conversation, we weave in the image of deep time, of the long arc of human evolution, and the profound inheritance that each of us carries. We speak of elements of the teacher-student relationship, and what supports learning, unfolding, and embodying what we all long for. May you enjoy the conversation, and we always love to hear your reflections. You can find out more information on the Emerald Podcasr, and Josh's teachings wherever you listen to podcasts.

Tipping The Scales Toward Love & Goodness In this beautiful conversation with poet, writer, and teacher Mark Nepo, we begin exploring Mark's beautiful take on what it means to be embodied. Throughout the conversation, we were blessed with Mark's soulful readings of several of our favorites of his poems. We discuss how care can erase the walls we keep building between us, and how using our imagination in service of a more beautiful world is so needed in a time of polarized divisiveness. It's our generation's turn - are we going to make a world rooted in love or rooted in fear and violence? Mark talks about the spiritual journey through the metaphor of a flower - not getting anywhere, but unfolding from the inside out. Mark speaks to a quote from William Blake: "Straight is the road to improvement. Crooked is the road to genius," as well as looking at the original definition of genius, and affirming that we each carry genius. Mark shares many stories from his book More Together than Alone, about the power of building community. Mark also shares a potent story about literacy in the Dark Ages in Europe - only 10% of the population was literate. 10% of the people kept literacy alive! What if we commit to being and nourishing the 10% who keep literacy of the heart and soul alive during these challenging times? We hope you find deep nourishment in this beautiful conversation. Mark Nepo is a poet and spiritual teacher who has taught in the fields of poetry and spirituality for over 40 years. With over a million copies sold, Mark has moved and inspired readers and seekers all over the world with his #1 New York Times bestseller The Book of Awakening. A beloved poet, teacher, and storyteller, Mark has been called "one of the finest spiritual guides of our time," "a consummate storyteller," and "an eloquent spiritual teacher." His work is widely accessible and used by many and his books have been translated into more than twenty languages. A bestselling author, Mark has published twenty-two books and recorded fifteen audio projects. Recent work includes The Book of Soul (St. Martin's Essentials, 2020), Drinking from the River of Light (Sounds True, 2019); More Together Than Alone (Atria, 2018) cited by Spirituality & Practice as one of the Best Spiritual Books of 2018; and Things That Join the Sea and the Sky (Sounds True, 2017), a Nautilus Book Award Winner. Mark was given a Life- Achievement Award by AgeNation in 2015; in 2016 he was named by Watkins: Mind Body Spirit as one of the 100 Most Spiritually Influential Living People, and was also chosen as one of OWN's SuperSoul 100, a group of inspired leaders using their gifts and voices to elevate humanity. In 2014 Mark was part of Oprah Winfrey's The Life You Want Tour, and has appeared several times on her Super Soul Sunday program on OWN TV. He has also been interviewed by Robin Roberts on Good Morning America. Mark is a regular columnist for Spirituality & Health Magazine. In his 30s Mark was diagnosed with a rare form of lymphoma, a struggle which helped to form his philosophy of experiencing life fully while staying in relationship to an unknowable future. Mark devotes his writing and teaching to the journey of inner transformation and the life of relationship. He continues to offer readings, lectures, and retreats. Please visit him at: www.MarkNepo.com, http://threeintentions.com and http://wmespeakers.com/speaker/mark-nepo In February 2022, Mark will be teaching in Salt Lake City, Utah through the Jung Society of Utah Friday, Feb 25th, 7pm: Heartwork: Being a Spirit in the World Saturday, Feb 26th, 9am-1pm: Reclaiming Our Humanity: Being Fierce and Tender in Our Call to Love You can find out more about these events, and register at jungutah.com